Kelly Gallagher's Article of the Week

For the past 22 years, Kelly Gallagher has been dedicated to building and sharing his knowledge about literacy. In addition to teaching English full-time at Magnolia High School in Anaheim, California, Kelly has an extensive background in secondary literacy education. He served as the English Coordinator for the Anaheim Union High School District, an urban district comprised of 37,000 secondary students; a Co-Director of the South Basin Writing Project at California State University Long Beach; and an adjunct professor at California State University, Fullerton, where he taught secondary literacy courses. (from http://www.kellygallagher.org/about/)

How will this help me? I already know how to read.

Good readers practice reading just like good basketball players practice basketball. According to Mr. Gallagher, often students have a hard time reading and writing because they do not have enough prior knowledge and background to work with. Students "can decode words, but the words remain meaningless without a foundation of knowledge" (Gallagher). In order to help build prior knowledge and practice reading fluency, we will read Mr. Gallagher's Articles of the Week. (Occasionally, we may choose our own.) By the end of the school year, you should have read between 35 to 40 articles about the world around you.

Weekly Article Reading Assignment

Read each article. Practice annotating the text. "Annotate" is a verb that means to "add notes to a text or diagram to give explanation or comment." After you read, write a paragraph response to the article. Ideas for response are usually provided at the end of Mr. Gallagher's articles. If no response questions are given, you get to choose what to write about or how to respond, as long as your response is tied to the article. Practice citing details from the article in your response. At the top of your response, record the title of the article, the author, the source, and the date. Keep your responses in your notebook in order as we read them.

How do I annotate an article?

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"As we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianne Williamson